Great Dispute Resolution

Conflict Resolution is a skill set necessary for survival in today's world of business. The ability to recognize conflict, understand the nature of conflict and to be able to bring swift and fair resolution to conflict will serve you well as a senior executive or entrepreneur. In today's blog post I will share my perspective on the art and science of conflict resolution.

How many times throughout the years have you witnessed otherwise savvy professionals self-destruct since they would not engage out of a fear of conflict? Putting one's head in the sand and hoping that conflict will pass you by just isn't the best dispute resolution methodology for problem solving. Conflict rarely resolves itself...In fact, conflict normally escalates if not dealt with proactively and properly. It really is not at all uncommon to find out what might happen to be a non-event manifest itself into a monumental problem if not resolved early on.

Developing effective conflict resolution skill sets are an essential component of a building a sustainable business model. Unresolved conflict often results in a loss of productivity, stifles creativity, and creates barriers to cooperation. While conflict is a normal part associated with any social and organizational setting, the challenge of conflict lies in how one chooses to cope with it. Concealed or avoided, conflict will likely fester only to grow into resentment, create withdrawal or cause factional infighting within an organization.

As such, what creates conflict at the place of work? Opposing positions, competitive tensions, power struggles, ego, pride, jealousy, performance discrepancies, compensation issues, just someone having a bad day, etc. As the answer to the previous question would appear to lead to the conclusion that pretty much anything and everything creates conflict, the the fact is that the root of most conflict is either born out of poor communication or the inability to control one's emotions. Let's examine these 2 major causes of conflict:

Communication: I've heard it said that 90% of all problems in business could be avoided with better communication. My personal opinion is the number is closer to 50% (with the remaining 50% being caused by unmanaged emotions). If you reflect back upon conflicts you have encountered in recent times you definitely will quickly recognize that many of them resulted from a lack of information, poor information, no information or misinformation. Let's assume for a moment that you were lucky enough to have received good information but didn't know how to handle it with it...That is still a communication problem, that may in turn lead to conflict. Clear, concise, accurate and timely communication of information can help to ease both the number and severity of conflicts.

Emotions: Another common mistake made in place of business communications that leads to conflict is letting emotions drive decisions. I have observed countless examples of men and women that jeopardize their future to protect their emotions, when what they should have done was protect their future by exhibiting control over their emotions. I have witnessed otherwise savvy executives place the need for emotional superiority ahead of achieving their mission (not that they always understood this at the time). Case in point...have you ever witnessed an employee throw a fit of rage and resign their position within the heat of the moment? If you have, what you really watched was a person comforting their emotions rather than protecting their future.

The very bane of human existence which is in fact human nature itself will invariably create gaps in thinking and philosophy and no matter how much we all wish it was not so...it really is. So the question then becomes how to effectively handle conflict when it arises.